didn't quite want you
mixed up in the story. I had your things conveyed to the consulate."

"My story--which few men would believe. I've thought of that. Are you
smoking?"

"Smoking, with my hands tied behind my back? Not so you'd notice it."

"I smell tobacco smoke--a good cigar, too."

"Then someone is in the passage listening."

Silence. Anthony Cleigh eyed his perfecto rather ruefully and tiptoed back
to the salon. Hoist by his own petard. He was beginning to wonder. Cleigh
was a man who rarely regretted an act, but in the clear light of day he
was beginning to have his doubts regarding this one. A mere feather on the
wrong side of the scale, and the British destroyers would be atop of him
like a flock of kites. Abduction! Cut down to bedrock, he had laid himself
open to that. He ran his fingers through his cowlicks. But drat the woman!
why had she accepted the situation so docilely? Since midnight not a sound
out of her, not a wail, not a sob. Now he had her, he couldn't let her
go. She was right there.

There was one man in the crew Cleigh had begun to dislike intensely, and
he had been manoeuvring ever since Honolulu to find a legitimate excuse to
give the man his papers. Something about the fellow suggested covert
insolence; he had the air of a beachcomber who had unexpectedly fallen
into a soft berth, and it had gone to his head. He had been standing watch
at the ladder head, and against positive orders he had permitted a visitor
to pass him. To Cleigh this was the handle he had been hunting for. He
summoned the man.

"Get your duffle," said Cleigh.

"What's that, sir?"

"Get your stuff. You're through. You had positive orders, and you let a
man by."

"But his uniform fussed me, sir. I didn't know just how to act."

"Get your stuff! Mr. Cleve will give you your pay. My orders are absolute.
Off with you!"

The sailor sullenly obeyed. He found the first officer alone in the chart
house.

"The boss has sent me for my pay, Mr. Cleve. I'm fired." Flint grinned
amiably.

"Fired? Well, well," said Cleve, "that's certainly tough luck--all this
way from home. I'll have to pay you in Federal Reserve bills. The old man
has the gold."

"Federal Reserve it is. Forty-six dollars in Uncle Samuels."

The first officer solemnly counted out the sum and laid it on the palm of
the discharged man.

"Tough world."

"Oh, I'm not worrying! I'll bet you this forty-six against ten that I've
another job before m